Clarkson, who fronted Top Gear for over a decade with Richard Hammond and James May, is now launching the new rival motoring series on Amazon Prime Video.

Appearing on The Jonathan Ross Show, Clarkson said the trio had to "start again" when planning The Grand Tour which airs next week.

The motoring enthusiast said: "You can't do the same show because of 'intellectual property'.

"So lawyers come and say 'You can't do that, you can't have the audience standing up, you can't do Star In A Car, you can't have The Stig, James May can't be slow and pedantic, I can't be bombastic, Hammond can't be short and from Birmingham' so we had to jumble everything up and so we had to start again."

Asked what he thought of the rebooted Top Gear series which aired earlier this year, Clarkson said: "This is the most political answer I'm ever going to give in my life, it's not for me to comment on the efforts of other people in the same sphere.

"They were doing their thing and I watched the first two and thought 'OK they're doing that, we'll carry on doing what we're doing'.

"Nobody goes 'Oh for heaven's sake, there's two cookery shows.' There must be a thousand cookery shows, there's a thousand gardening shows.

"Top Gear was very much my baby but now we have another one, it's grown up, it's become adolescent."

Clarkson also spoke about the the US presidential election result, calling it "hilarious" that controversial Republican candidate Donald Trump had won.

"It is hilarious. I do like chaos. I really have always enjoyed chaos ever since I was a small boy, I liked to push over the display of beans in the supermarket, that sort of thing.

"That hair, that nylon hair is now in the White House and you just think that is properly funny."